IBM Support

Flash drives on firmware level 540D can be erroneously excluded from an array after accumulating 5 years of use

Flashes (Alerts)


Abstract

After accumulating approximately 5 years use, drives operating with firmware level 540D can erroneously report a warning relating to longevity as calculated by the number of power on hours. Spectrum Virtualize code responds to any alert of predictive drive failure by failing the drive from all arrays which have the redundancy to do so, including this age based alert. As power on hours is not a reliable indicator of drive health, this alert was removed in drive firmware 540F and upgrade to this level is strongly recommended at the earliest opportunity

Content

Firmware level 540D will inform the system when drives approach 5 years of power on time as an information message irrespective of the actual endurance remaining. The system interprets this message as an indication that the drive has reached the end of life. The system will remove reporting drives from any array with redundancy. As this may affect multiple drives of identical age within the same array, a lack of RAID redundancy for a significant period may occur as each affected drive must be repaired using a utility, and returned back to the array using an array rebuild one by one. 

Actual drive endurance can be viewed in the detailed output of lsdrive <drive_id> as a percentage in the value write_endurance_used or as an estimated end of life date in the value replacement_date

IBM strongly recommends customers with these types of drives running with exposed code levels upgrade their drive firmware to level 540F as the earliest opportunity. This firmware is available in the latest drive firmware packages  and in a special firmware package linked below.

It is important that this firmware is not installed on drives which are already reporting errors, whether failed or not. If a drive of this type is failed in the system, do not install the firmware to any of the other drives

Table of affected drive models: 

Feature 

Exposed drive code 

Model Number 

400GB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SMB040 

800GB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SMB080 

1600GB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SMB160 

3200GB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SMB320 

2TB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SRB192 

4TB 

5408, 540D 

PX04SRB384 

Determining the drive firmware using the GUI 

 Click Pools > Internal Storage. 

Right-click on one of the table headers (e.g. Use) and check the Firmware Level box.  The firmware level is now added to the table. 

Determining the drive firmware using the CLI 

These drives can be identified by running the command lsdrive from the CLI and looking for the associated firmware levels in the resulting output 

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Document Information

Modified date:
28 March 2023

UID

ibm16479879

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